Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary Sugarcane about the reckoning on the Sugarcane reserve following an investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school. Emerging themes include intergenerational trauma visited upon the vulnerable by figures in charge, including those who claimed to be godly, how the harm these egregious acts caused were compounded by secrecy, the worth of confronting these horrors with unflinching witness, honesty, and the connection and resilience available when we can do this within our families and communities. Astrologically these themes relate to the 4th, 9th, and 12th houses.
Distribution: Currently on Theatrical Run, to be released on Disney+ and Hulu more info.
Directors: Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie
Run Time: 111 minutes
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.479] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories from Sundance 2024, where we'll be covering 36 total documentaries. And this is the first out of six in our theme of Faith and Ritual. And today we're going to be starting with a film called Sugarcane, which is a part of the U.S. documentary competition. It actually picked up the directing award that was presented to the directors, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Cassie. And so, yeah, Wonder, take it away for the synopsis.
[00:00:46.458] Wonder Bright: Sugarcane. An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve. Filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie deliver a multilayered film that invites audiences to confront profound questions about morality and justice. and to bear witness to the lasting intergenerational legacy of trauma from the residential school system, including forced family separation, physical and sexual abuse, and the destruction of Native culture and language. Drawing on their backgrounds in activism and journalism, as well as NoiseCat's own personal connection to the story and community, the filmmakers deftly weave together multiple strands to form this compelling, heartbreaking narrative. Demonstrating unparalleled humanity, compassion, and grace for the affected Indigenous communities in North America, their powerful documentary operates from a place of pure and total empathy. At the same time, NoiseCat and Kassie recognize the resilience of the survivors and their descendants, and their unflagging determination to seek answers to long-buried secrets. Ultimately, Sugarcane reminds us to respect the humanity in ourselves as well as in others. So this synopsis was written by one of the programmers. We only have their initials, BB.
[00:02:07.196] Kent Bye: Yeah, this was actually one of my favorite films of the entire festival, and it's such a powerful piece. And one of the things I just want to start off by saying is that Julian Brave NoiseCat introduced this piece by saying that, first of all, it's not really an easy film to watch. There's a lot of really intense subject that it's diving into. But he also said that in his culture, it's a very significant role to be able to bear witness to these types of stories. And at the end, one of the participants also said, part of the role of bearing witness is to come out of it and tell the story of what you saw. And I think that's what we're going to attempt to do today by talking about this story. But yeah, I'd love to hear some of your first thoughts of this piece.
[00:02:50.962] Wonder Bright: Yeah, this is absolutely my favorite piece. And there's a reason that I wanted to start with it. And in many ways, it framed for me why I wanted to start with a slew of films that would be talking about something that I'm calling Faith and Ritual. Although I mean that in a fairly broad sense. If you've listened to our first episode from this season, you'll know that we're picking up on themes in a lot of the films that we watched this season that have to do with the Saturn Pluto conjunction and Capricorn and have to do with the way in which world events have really stirred up conversations about dominant power structures and the impact that they have had for centuries on people who have been oppressed by just some of the worst, most despotic acts that humans can cause against other humans. So one of the main reasons that I wanted to think about things from a Faith and Ritual perspective is because it's through our experience of faith, whether we're thinking about that as religious faith or whether we're thinking about that as a philosophical thing or a legal thing or whatever it is that gives us faith in the world, it might be science for some people. But however we have that faith and the rituals that we enact in order to bolster that faith and keep it solid, those are the strategies for resilience when things are really hard. And this film demonstrates one strategy for that that is in the synopsis that the programmer for Sundance wrote. And it's also in the introduction that you just mentioned from Julian Brave NoiseCat around this idea of bearing witness as a sacred ritual. Those of you who may have listened to our last season will know that bearing witness is actually an astrological idea where when one planet can see another, it's making an aspect to one another and that the ancient Hellens considered that an act of witnessing. And all of last season, Kent and I really took that to heart and wanted to try to bear witness to the filmmakers' visions that we were privileged to see. So the minute that Julian Brave NoiseCat said that in the introduction, my heart was just spiked and I was really keen to hear what they had to say. What I was unprepared for was not only that this was a film that in and of itself was bearing witness to these devastating acts that indigenous populations across North America were subject to in the last several centuries, but that we would be invited in to witness the tribal members witnessing one another as they went through this process of trying to understand what had happened, like, investigating what had happened, and the impact that it was still having on generations, even people who had not been in the schools. So this film is not just telling a story that we all need to bear witness to. It's actually also demonstrating for us what it takes and what it looks like and how it feels to bear witness and the kind of healing that is available when people tell the truth and other people acknowledge that that is the truth and that it has been told. And then they go forth and share it themselves. So for me, this film has a kind of magical property because there's so many other spaces - this film of all the films touches on other categories that we'll be talking about, it is 100 percent a Saturn Pluto film, it’s also a 4th House land and ancestors and family film. And for me, the main thing that I was able to take away from it was the extraordinary healing power that is available when we bear witness to one another. And I just hope that we can do justice to this film as we continue to unpack it here.
[00:07:10.848] Kent Bye: Yeah, I definitely feel like the experience of watching this film is like they're going on this 9th House pilgrimage where they're searching for the truth. They're doing investigation. They're trying to get the facts. They're trying to understand exactly what happened because the government institutions, in this case, it's mostly the police where they're supposed to be receiving accounts of wrongdoing, but yet whenever there were these allegations of missing Native children from these residential schools, which were run by the Catholic Church, these schools were really designed to be an oppressive force of the Native culture. And so it's a bit of reckoning with the types of abuse and trauma that were happening. So a lot of eyewitness testimony of people talking about their own direct experiences of what they experienced within these schools, the type of abuse, evidence of finding unmarked mass graves of lots of children that had been killed within the context of these schools. And then trying to find both the truth and reconciliation, the truth of trying to investigate what actually happened, and to speak the truth, even within the context of one of the directors, Julian Brave NoiseCat, he's interacting with his father and trying to have his own personal healing by speaking the truth as to what happened to him and to tell the story of these experiences and the challenges of the shame and the constriction, this kind of Saturnian closing off of not wanting to speak the truth. And so there's this fight against actually speaking the truth, this more mercurial shining a light and actually speaking to what actual events were happening. So Julian is actually interacting with his father in this piece, who, as is revealed within the story, there's a certain part of his father's history of things that he's trying to close the gaps and learn more about. So there's this other dimension of this 4th House trying to get at the root of these traumas and these wounds that have been intergenerational and spread out over time. And he's really trying to investigate that and speak into that. But there's also this power dynamic between the church who were propagating a lot of these traumas, and also the state institution of the Canadian government. There happened to be residential schools in the United States as well, but this was happened to be within the country of Canada, which has been a lot more open to trying to bring in right relationships to these past injustices. And so there's a number of different seeking out of apologies and acknowledgement. And there are some things that are spoken in this. And one of the things that came up in the Q&A afterwards was what else needs to happen to really bring about healing. Julian Brave NoiseCat was essentially saying, well, there's a lot of things that were being spoken, but there wasn't a lot of actions that were being taken. And so it's going to be really up to the survivors to decide what other things need to happen to really move towards this truth and reconciliation and real forgiveness, or at least acknowledgement of what happened. And so I feel like this film is on this larger journey of trying to find healing for the experiences that people had.
[00:10:32.509] Wonder Bright: I'm having this experience right now where I am so aware that I want to do justice to this story and I want to get it right. And it's completely choking me because I'm so intent on doing the right thing that I'm having a hard time being present because I'm thinking too much about what is the right thing to say. And I feel like that kind of thinking is exactly the thing that gets in the way of doing what we've been asked to do and what was demonstrated for us in this film, which is to just breathe and, like, be in the space of being able to receive what's being told to us. And there is a whole level of reckoning and understanding that has happened to me since the Saturn Pluto conjunction and really even leading up to it in 2014 with the Ferguson riots and the killing of Michael Brown. And one of the things that white people were asked to do over and over again is just stop talking and go away and listen. I've just been reading and watching and trying to understand. And I just am so overwhelmed sometimes by the enormity of how much I'll never be able to understand. And I think one of the things that this film did is it invited us in, in a really personal way, to have as much of an experience as possible of the impact on a very specific aspect of how indigenous North Americans have had their culture and their livelihoods stripped from them through the experience of residential schooling. Because what colonialism was really good at was identifying how to enforce law by dehumanizing the people that they either enslaved and / or stole land from. And one of the primary ways of doing that, it turns out, is to remove children from their families, to remove parents from their children. And the policy that was enacted around taking Native children away from their families and putting them in residential schools comes from a very famous speech where a man named R.H. Pratt spoke on the, quote, “education of Native Americans". His mantra was, “kill the Indian in him and save the man". So their idea was that they were very intentional about taking these Native kids out of the home and killing the Indian in them by depriving them of their language. making them speak only in English, depriving them of their heritage and their ancestry by stripping them of their rituals and teaching them Catholicism, and strictly punishing them when they did not adhere to those standards. And one of the truest evils that we come to learn about in this film, I mean, I had heard about it before, but when I say I learned about it here, it's like I saw the impact generationally that it had on these tribes because a lot of kids were killed or died from suicide because they were sexually harmed. They were sexually abused by the priests in charge of these schools. And nobody said anything. And if a young girl got pregnant, she's punished. And her child is taken away from her. So watching how that lands generationally, you see how this impacts people. And these schools, by the way, were still in existence until the 90s. So it's not like this is some forgotten long ago history. It's living in the bodies of people who went to those schools. 1990 is not that long ago. So these traumas are still happening.
[00:15:08.484] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, I think that as I look at this film and think about some of the significations, I do think that there is this element where we're taken on this pilgrimage and this journey towards truth and speaking of the truth and trying to find justice in a lot of ways. It's a key theme of just trying to find healing. But I feel like the center of the piece, it's also just really not shying away from showing some of the deepest, darkest traumas that people have gone through. And so it reminds me of the 12 House themes, as Demetra George talks about: "painful experiences of life, sorrow, suffering, troubles, malice, disappointments, trials and tribulations”. The direct eyewitnesses of the people they feature in this film are the people who were going through many of these different sorrows, and it doesn't shy away from speaking about those. How can you bring about some sort of reconciliation by speaking the truth as to what happened? Which I think this film is trying to shine a light on. And then there's a lot of 4th House themes of the family, having the director featuring both his father and grandmother and trying to get to his own unconscious patterns. And so the 4th House, as Demetra George says, speaks to “the family of origin issues, wounds, childhood traumas that impact adult emotional security and the capacity to bond with others”. And so there are some of these intergenerational wounds they are really digging into. And like you said, because of the different generations that are being shown here in this film, we're getting a sense of the impact of these actions over time. And the other thing I just wanted to bring out is I definitely think that there's a lot of Saturn-Pluto themes where the Saturnian constrictions and restraints with the platonic aspect of this real volcanic, visceral expression of power and the dynamics of power. And so you get the asymmetrical aspect of power here where not only the church but also the state was really not listening to the accounts of missing children and abuse. They actually have this really amazing scene where these natives go to the police of Canada and the police are willing to open up their files. They say, you know, we're not normally willing to open up our investigative files to citizens. But in this case, because of all the mass graves that were being found with radar and discovering the empirical evidence that there was indeed a lot of unmarked graves and that those missing children were more than likely killed and buried rather than just missing. And so you have this situation where there's accounts of people who were providing their eyewitness testimony to the authorities, but they were being ignored. Or just the authority of the church, in this case, the church being more of a 9th House institution of religion. but also the 10th House of authority and power that you have another pilgrimage of natives from this community actually traveling to the Vatican seeking an apology from the Pope, which they get some statement, but he basically says his apology and it's like, “okay, thanks for coming. Goodbye”. And it's like, there's no conversation. There's no witnessing to what the stories are. It's just basically a lot of words without action as Julian Brave NoiseCat says at the end. So when I think about this film, I think about some of these deeper contextual domains as they're all coming together and trying to find a way to tell the story of each of these different domains and to ultimately, as we come back to the 9th House themes of the faith and rituals, find a healing ritual for how to speak the truth, how to really get into what actually happened. and to create an experience like this in this film where us as audience members can at least bear witness to the story and share what we saw. Even if there's limited agency or action as individuals watching it that we can take, we can at least watch the story and share with others what we saw, as was given us as a directive at the end in the Q&A. We watched a lot of the Q&A sessions, I think this was probably one of the more powerful ones just because we got to hear, okay, what has happened next? What else needs to happen? And just to hear a little bit more about this incredible journey that we've been able to take on - Like I said, I feel like this piece could have very easily, for my vote at least, won the grand jury prize. I feel like it was such a marvelous achievement of using the film medium to take us on this journey and to cover a topic that I feel like is so important. And I'm really glad that they at least got the directing award, but I really feel like it's quite an achievement of what they're able to do in this film.
[00:19:52.023] Wonder Bright: It would totally have my vote if I had one. It has it even if I don't. I want to pick up on something that you spoke about here in terms of the way that they're looking at what it takes to go on this journey of trying to find the truth and trying to heal from these harms. And there's two scenes that, well, there's a lot of scenes that really stuck with me, but there's two that feel really paired to me in a particular way around that theme of trying to understand what really happened and trying to redress the harms. And the first is the one that you just mentioned, where a former chief of the local tribe goes to the Vatican and meets with the Pope and then the Pope dismisses them, but the chief gets to go to see a priest who really listens to him and seems to give a heartfelt apology. But he doesn't really name what the church has done. So it's a “I'm sorry”, that sounds and feels heartfelt in the delivery. But in the absence of naming the harms that were actually inflicted by the church, it lacks substance in a really strong way. And then that's especially undercut by the fact that the priest then goes on to say, and what you need to do now is to forgive us so that the church can heal from this.
[00:21:19.478] Kent Bye: And I think he said, “you need to pray for our forgiveness”, you know, basically turning it around, like the church has harmed him. And then the church is telling him, well, you need to pray for us, the perpetrator in this situation.
[00:21:31.730] Wonder Bright: It was so egregiously incorrect. And I was so aggravated. And I know that I'm such a people pleaser. When people apologize to me, even if they haven't owned the harm wrong, I'm like, Oh, no, no, it's okay. And I was so ecstatic when the chief who was sitting there in his beaded vest and his modern day native regalia looked at the priest and said something to the effect that the next step after an apology is to redress those harms oneself. So we would need that to happen, essentially. And it was so fantastic the way that he just held that moment and he did it without bitterness, amazingly. But it was so firm and so clear because he really heard what the priest was saying in a way that the priest did not hear what he had said. And then the other scene that kind of like fits in with this to my mind in a certain way is the scene where Julian Brave NoiseCat is talking to his father and they're on the road and he's trying to get across to his father how the harms that had been done to his father he then passed on to Julian because Archie NoiseCat was unable to show up for his child and he disappeared shortly after Julian's birth and he was gone and he was absent. And Julian is expressing how painful that is for him. And his father doesn't offer a real apology and he doesn't defend himself either. What he does do is he restates where he was at in his own journey of trauma and the fact that he was drunk, he was an alcoholic most of the time. He literally couldn't show up. And there's this moment between the two of them that the filmmakers know enough not to disturb because it's a moment where it's not possible for Archie to own the harm that he did to his son. He is owning it in the best way that he can, which is to acknowledge that this is a generational trauma and that he did what he could do and that was to disappear. So what happens in that moment is not so much the, like, idea that we have in our head of what forgiveness looks like, right? It's not the path towards reconciliation that would make us all feel comfortable. But it's a larger understanding of what forgiveness might be where we're able to not just sit with the harm that's been done to us, but the harm that is passed on to us through these generational traumas and an ability to have compassion for, like, both father and son have compassion for one another in these circumstances that were so outside of their control. And it's a distinctly different conversation than the conversation that the priest and the chief have in Rome, because the conversation that the chief and the priest are having in Rome is a conversation where we don't even want to talk about what happened. We're just going to say, oh, we're sorry. And then we're going to, like, ask you to forgive us. And then we're going to check all our boxes. And now forgiveness has happened and everything's OK. And that's just not how it is. Like sometimes the act of reconciliation is really a process of reconciliation where all parties are coming to the truth of the situation and the impossibility of resolving the past. Like sometimes we have to just be with the past. And I don't know what that might look like across the board for all of us everywhere for all time. But there was like pieces of a puzzle that got put together for me in this film watching those two moments with this family attempting to piece together what had happened and who they were going to be in relationship to one another now. Not carrying that past forward with them, but acknowledging it and allowing it to be a part of who they were.
[00:26:30.118] Kent Bye: Yeah, it reminds me of a film that we watched over the Christmas break, which was The Long Night's Journey Into Day, which was looking at the South African apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they had there to have some process by which that they could really speak the truth of the harms that had happened and also to provide the opportunity for the people who had maybe been perpetrators of those harms to admit them and to speak the truth as to what had happened and potentially apologize and have some sort of reconciliation and forgiveness. That was shown at Sundance back in 2000, back when I had visited it over 20 years ago, and it really stuck with me as a film. I feel like it's a thing that's still in our culture today. How do you apologize? How do you actually have reconciliation for these harms? You know, apologies don't seem to take it to the level where it needs to go, whether it's reparations or whether it's actually, like, speaking the truth as to what had happened and so really owning the harm that was done and speaking the harm that was done. And we look at the opportunity for the Catholic Church to own the harm done and to apologize. It feels like it's this doubling down on that power asymmetry and just kind of constrictive, no, we're not even going to, we're going to say the words, but not really meaningfully do anything to make it feel like it's really shifting us towards this place of reconciliation or forgiveness. So this is obviously a huge topic that I feel like all the different governments that are out there, I feel like Canada is on the forefront on some degrees, but yet even then, you have images of Justin Trudeau kind of swooping in for press conference when these tribal members of indigenous peoples were going to the Vatican to seek an apology. And he comes into the Sugarcane (Reserve) and makes an appearance after it had been in the news for a while. And so there's a moment where a journalist is asking him, does this have anything tied to the fact that they're at the Vatican asking for forgiveness? It's egg on the face of Canada that they have not really even addressed it. And now they're getting an audience from the Pope. So there's kind of like this moment of even what the Canadian government is doing is in this weird space of doing things maybe for a PR effect rather than actually seeking some of these deeper aspects of truth and reconciliation. Although I feel like of all the different countries I've seen around the world, there's what's happening in Australia and Canada are probably like a lot further along of how things are here in the United States, which feels like a good few decades behind for what's happening with some of these practices of reconciliation or just even acknowledging the unceded territories of the lands that were stolen?
[00:29:05.926] Wonder Bright: Yeah, you know, I think it's a really interesting concept, the idea of truth and reconciliation. And I think we get really mixed up in our culture because we have these ideas about Christian forgiveness and turn the other cheek. And truth and reconciliation is not about sweeping things under the rug, which is what our common understanding of forgiveness is. We have this idea that it's about letting go and no longer thinking about the past. But as we see in Sugarcane, that has disastrous consequences. It's actually not letting things in and not speaking about it that causes some of the worst harms in this film. And as we talked about in our first episode, I was recently diagnosed with cancer. And from the very start, My doctors have been completely amazing with me because they don't sugarcoat anything and they're not weird about it. You know, like, the first time I met my surgeon, he walked in the door and he pulled up his rolly chair and leaned in real close to me, took my hand in his like he was going to shake it, but then he encased it in both of his hands and he looked into my eyes and he said very seriously, “I am so sorry that this is happening to you”. And I think it was kind of like the first moment where you and I were, like, Oh no, this is really serious. And that's scary. But it also was incredibly reassuring because I could tell it was the truth and he wasn't going to beat about the bush with me and he was going to be level with me. And it meant that I could trust him. And he wasn't trying to make things better, you know, and by and large, all of the medical care that I've had since this whole thing started has been exactly that same way. And the relief of, you know, not being told by people that, oh, this is happening for a reason or like whatever crappy band-aid people want to put on something that is not something you can put a band-aid on. It’s actually just a relief when people will be honest and be truthful with you. And there's a real healing just in that, because it allows you to come to terms with the truth, with the facts of the matter. And then you can actually deal with the fallout. But if you don't have the basic facts, then you're not even allowed to deal with it. And what was so remarkable about Sugarcane is just this opportunity of watching a community come together, investigate the facts, agree upon them, and then share in their grief about all that they have lost and all that's at stake for them. And even in the absence of having recognition from the culture that caused that harm, whether that be the Canadian government or if you're a Native American living in the United States, the U.S. government, whether it be that, you know, the Vatican is not able to provide an adequate response to this trauma. They're still finding healing with one another because the truth is being told and they are seeing it and they're receiving it and they're sharing it with one another. And I hope that we've done some kind of justice in our capacity to receive this truth and to share it with everyone who might be listening to this, because I was really grateful for being able to be present for this and I don't want it to happen again. And I know that it is happening around the world, but I want to be able to tell the truth when I see it.
[00:32:52.037] Kent Bye: Yeah. And as we start to wrap up, we're going to return to a question that we were asking at the end of every episode last year and the story all the way down when we're looking at the 2023 edition of Sundance. And that is, what are you bearing witness to? And we're going to add something new this year, which is, who would you prescribe this film as a remedial measure? And so I'll go ahead and answer my take on it. I'd love to hear what you have to say about this film. So I'm just bearing witness to the process that the filmmakers went on in this piece, which was to fearlessly investigate the truth and share the story of what has happened in this community in a way that is really an investigation of the facts, but also this healing from within the context of the co-director, Julian Brave NoiseCat, and his own family. One of the notes that was made in the synopsis was the difference that it makes when you have people from a community telling the story of their community. So there's a saying of nothing about us without us. And I feel like this is a story that is enriched so much to have a member from this community that's being covered as being a main protagonist in this film. And so when I think about the archetypal signatures of this piece, I feel like that there's certain aspects of like 11th House community gatherings and the 9th House ritualistic aspects. But for me, I keep coming back to the 12th House because I feel like that's kind of like the center gravity of this piece, which is really fearlessly looking into some of the sorrows and pains and traumas that these survivors had to go through and them talking about how literally the writing was on the wall with these survivors up in the attic of one of these churches who were writing their experiences of what they were going through. And so just to bear witness to people speaking about what is normally being hidden or being filled with shame or taboo, certain aspects of their lives and their experiences that are honestly hard and difficult to talk about. But some ways there's a healing antidote that is revealed by the process of speaking the truth. So this mercurial nature of being able to both shine a spotlight on it, but to speak about it and to communicate about it. So yeah, kind of like a 12th House mercury aspect is what I'd say.
[00:35:16.004] Wonder Bright: Maybe that's why I liked it so much. Yeah, I also want to bear witness to Julian Brave NoiseCat, and his exhortation to us to take on the act of bearing witness and then his unflagging, unfailing example and illustration of doing just that in this film and what it takes and the love and compassion that it requires of a human being and the possibilities that lie inherent in the practice of taking it on as a practice, as an intention. And I am so appreciative of the unseen, mysterious workings of his co-director, Emily Cassie, who clearly was doing exactly that, but we just never see her because she never makes his story her story. She just bears witness to it because we're watching it, so we know that she's done that work. And in terms of like who I would prescribe this film for, I agree with you. I would prescribe it for anybody who has 12th House signatures, specifically 12th House signatures that are wrapped up in having to be the bearer of secrets and specifically people who have to carry secrets for their family. So also 4th House. And so often those secrets and those traumas get passed down generationally. And this film is a beautiful testimony to one family and one tribe's resilience in unpacking those lies and the harm that's been done to their generations so that their descendants might hopefully be free.
[00:37:10.492] Kent Bye: Hmm. Beautiful. Well, that's all that we have for today on today's episode of story all the way down. We want to thank you for tuning into our unpacking of Sugarcane and starting to dive into the Sundance 2024 selection. And, uh, yeah, if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider joining our newsletter and going to storyallthewaydown.com and, uh, just keeping in touch. I'd love to hear from some of our listeners as we continue to finish out this season and look to seasons ahead. We'd love to get some feedback for what type of stuff you'd like to see us cover in the future. So thanks for joining us. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
